Halcyon The Complete Trilogy (42 page)

“Shut up and wait. That’s the plan. Sade isn’t going to do anything. She knows we’re here. She’s also missing her guards. Do you think she’ll send those little kids back here next? Nah, she’ll sit up there and hope that we don’t make a scene. Which we won’t.” He thumbed his nose and hunkered down in his seat. “How much longer to Orossa?”

Chapter 38. Taziri

Taziri gripped the edge of her console with clawing fingers. Every few seconds, she tried to relax her hands and her back and her legs, but then the lightning would flash and the thunder would roar and she’d be tense as an overwound spring again. The view through the forward windows was a blur of glittering rain, black clouds, and blue-white afterimages all piled on top of each other like dozens of stained glass windows, except the images were all mountain peaks and parts of the
Halcyon
’s cockpit.

She glanced at Ghanima. In the darkness, she could just barely see the pilot swaying her shoulders from side to side and bobbing her head slightly. Her lips were moving silently.

Taziri grinned in spite of herself. Ghanima was singing and dancing, mostly in her head, but just a bit of the music was slipping out into her body too. Watching Ghanima navigate the storm while providing her own in-flight entertainment, Taziri released her death grip on her station and rested her hands on the chart table. Somewhere beneath her fingers was a map of Marrakesh under a hinged glass lid, but there was no light to see it. No cabin lights, no flashlights, only the sudden lightning that seemed to wait until she was facing something useless to strike and burn yet another blue-white image into her tired eyes.

The beacon light at the edge of the city hung low in the sky, its support tower invisible in the starless night. “How close, do you think?”

“At this rate? Maybe another hour, hour and a half. This crosswind is pretty stiff. We’re just creeping along up here.” Ghanima didn’t sound tired at all.

“Just let me know when you want me to spell you. You’ve been driving for a long while now. You should take a break.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Taziri frowned and her fingers crept back to grip the edge of her station.

An hour later, the last ridge slipped by beneath the airship’s belly and the tiny lights of the Lower City shone clearly across the floor of the valley. Countless candle flames danced in countless homes, filling the windows with unsteady yellow glows. The streetlamps sipped at their gas feeds, offering a steadier, brighter light at regular intervals up and down the city blocks.

Taziri peered down. “The airfield must be there, in that dark patch to the right.”

“I think you’re right.” Ghanima eased the controls to starboard. “I’ve only made this landing a couple times at night. We usually arrive in Orossa around mid-afternoon when we come in from España.”

“If you want, I can take us in.”

She shook her head. “I’m good.”

The landing approach began smoothly with only the murmur of the rain competing with the droning of the propellers, but as they descended over the field the
Halcyon
began to shimmy and shake.

“Just a little turbulence, folks,” Ghanima muttered. The airship dropped a yard, then glided swiftly to port, then nosed down and swooped over the grass. She kicked the pedals, rotated the props, and planted the
Halcyon
’s wheels in the soft mud. “Just like in the manual.”

Taziri smiled and patted her shoulder. “Nice work.”

Before she could say another word, the cabin lights flickered on overhead, and the heavy flashlight sitting in the tool rack threw its feeble beam up against the wall. Pilot and engineer exchanged a look, and laughed. Then the outside floodlights snapped on and the darkness blossomed into a field of brilliant green grass, and in that grass on all sides of the ship stood dozens of uniformed soldiers with rifles trained on the
Halcyon
’s cabin.

Taziri froze.

Ghanima whispered, “Shit.”

They held their empty hands high, gently woke the snoring doctor, and then calmly and quietly opened the hatch. Taziri winced in anticipation of the first blow. It was harder than she expected. The next few minutes were a blur of shouting and being shoved against the airship’s hull, kicked, shackled, and dragged out onto the wet grass to kneel alongside a wheezing Ghanima and a trembling Evander.

“Please, please! Who is in command here?” She heard herself speaking like it was someone else. Her heart was in her throat as she saw the dozens of gun barrels gazing at her like dead black eyes. The rain hissed all around them.

A square-faced woman loomed over them. “I’m General Demsiri. You are under arrest for the crimes of arson, murder, and treason against the crown. You will be held in an army prison until your trial and inevitable execution.”

“No-no-no! You’ve got it wrong! Chaou and Hamuy! It’s the ambassador and her bodyguard, they did it!” Adrenaline-fueled panic soaked through Taziri’s brain as she pictured her last few hours in a stone cell, far from her Yuba and Menna. “I watched Hamuy stab my captain, Isoke, right in front of me!”

“And I saw the ambassador shoot my captain in the back on the
Crake
!” Ghanima tried to stand and was promptly kicked back down by the soldier standing behind her.

The general frowned at them. “Medur Hamuy is the man who informed us about what exactly happened in Tingis. He barely survived the journey here, and he said you might try to blame him. He also said you might try to smuggle a foreign assassin into the Upper City. I assume he meant this Hellan.”

Evander stared up, baffled. “Assassin? I’m a doctor! The finest surgeon you’ll ever have the privilege to arrest, madam! And what’s more, I’m here at the request of the queen herself. I have papers! Check them! Here, in my bag!”

Still frowning, Demsiri took the bag and stepped into the airship cabin out of the rain. Taziri tried to turn to see what she was doing, but all she got was a rifle butt to her shoulder to shove her back again. A minute later, the general reappeared and handed the bag to another officer. Demsiri circled them once. “I’m having the papers checked. They’ll be verified with the Upper City within the hour. We’ll wait in the hangar.”

Taziri felt the soldiers lifting her by her armpits and then she stumbled through the slick mud with dark, shining rifles waving on every side. She shuffled into the hangar where the gas lamps were burning brightly to reveal a clean swept floor and a few collapsible tables and chairs. With her hands still tied behind her back, Taziri was pushed down with Ghanima and Evander to sit together encircled by wet, frowning soldiers, their long coats and trousers dripping with knives, grenades, and other little boxes and vials that the airship engineer assumed were lethal.

The general’s hour turned out to be nearly two hours, and they were spent in nearly perfect silence. The soldiers did not move, rarely blinked, and the officers seated at the tables made only faint scratching sounds as they filled out their paperwork.

Finally, a pair of young soldiers jogged into the hangar, their short hair plastered to their foreheads, and handed a slender document case to the general. Demsiri snapped the case open, perused its contents, and promptly snapped it shut again. “Doctor, your papers have been verified. I apologize for any inconvenience to you, but I’m sure you can appreciate our need for security here in the nation’s capital.”

The doctor’s hands were cut free and he was helped to his feet. “Actually no, I don’t give a damn about your security, especially since I’ve seen nothing but barbarism and madness since I entered this country. Now let these two go!” He pointed at the aviators. “They’ve been saving my life for more than two days now. They’re better patriots than that damned diplomat of yours, Chaou. And I heard Hamuy confess, too. They’re the ones you want, like the young lady here said. So let these two go!”

“I was about to.” The general nodded to her soldiers to free Taziri and Ghanima. “I’ve just read the Royal Guards’ incident report from Tingis and I know these two are not responsible for those crimes. Again, I apologize for the misunderstanding.”

Taziri stood up, gently massaging her wrists. All of her cold fears of dying a lonely traitor’s death transformed into a burning self-righteous fury. The desire to scream at the general filled her head with self-aggrandizing fantasies complete with exotic expletives she had learned in Carthage, but instead she only shivered and shook her head. “It’s fine. Can we go?”

 “Of course. Doctor, my people will escort you to the Dawn’s Inn at the base of the carriage road. A room is waiting for you and you’ll be taken to the Upper City first thing in the morning.”

“Ah.” Evander nodded and began patting his pockets. “Yes, well then, ah, my bag, thank you. Yes.” He turned and took Taziri’s hand. “It seems you managed to get me here in one piece after all, young lady. Thank you for that. Good night.” And he shuffled away with his escort into the freezing rain.

General Demsiri cleared her throat.

Taziri rubbed her eyes. “Is there something else, general?”

“Yes, there is. We still have the small matter of Medur Hamuy to resolve.” She tapped her toe while staring out into the darkness beyond the open hangar doors. “He’s here in the Lower City somewhere. My people will pick him up tonight or tomorrow. I’ll need you two to stay long enough to confirm his identity and sign a statement regarding the events in Tingis. For the record.”

“Not a problem, ma’am.” Taziri nodded. “I think we’re done flying for tonight.”

Thunder roared overhead. Ghanima jumped slightly. “Yeah, I think we’re done.”

“Good. You can stay with my people. There’s a building we’re not using, so you’ll have some privacy and some quiet.” The general indicated the opposite end of the hangar and they all began walking. Behind them, the soldiers collapsed and gathered the tables and chairs and the small office vanished into bundles under their arms as they fell in behind their commander.

“Quiet?” Taziri shivered. “I think we’ll be listening to this storm for the rest of the night.”

“Hm? Oh, no, I meant quiet from my people. This is a perfect night for spot inspections and surprise drills. Maybe a nice long run in the mud, up a mountainside, far from the lights of the city. I do love the rain.”

Taziri nodded in answer, feeling at once intensely grateful she was not a soldier and intensely sympathetic for the young women and men who would be awake, wet, cold, and miserable for the rest of the night.

Their walk through the rain was a short one following a straight gravel road from the airfield past a group of warehouses to a series of long, low buildings with narrow windows and blank brick walls. One of the general’s aides led them to the third building and lit the lamp by the door, and then excused herself without offering a tour of the facility. But as Taziri glanced around, she saw that no tour was needed. The bunkhouse was little more than a long prison cell with dozens of beds.

She shrugged off her heavy jacket and dropped it on the first bed. “So, do you want the twenty beds on the right, or the twenty on the left?”

Ghanima rolled her eyes, kicked off her boots, dropped her jacket over the foot of the next bed, and collapsed in an undignified sprawl atop the green blanket. She groaned. “It’s scratchy.”

Taziri sat down to unlace her boots. “What’s scratchy?”

Ghanima flopped over, then flopped over again. “Everything.”

But when Taziri’s head touched the pillow, she wasn’t awake long enough to notice how scratchy the blankets were. The noise of the propellers was gone, the roar of the thunder and crash of the lightning were gone, and even the drumming rain was muted by the thick brick walls of the bunkhouse. She closed her eyes and plunged gratefully into a warm, dark silence.

Taziri awoke with a cold shock, an instant of physical pain and freezing panic. The room was unfamiliar, a long bizarre vista of identical beds repeating into infinity, barely visible in the pale light filtering through the strange little windows near the ceiling. She heard clapping and rumbling. But all of this she perceived only dimly because there were two enormous hands around her throat and she couldn’t breathe and her vision was dimming and the sounds of her own moaning seemed to be coming from far away.

Then she was rolling and spinning, and the pressure on her throat was gone. Taziri lay on the floor, gasping and massaging her neck, her ears roaring with muddled noise as though she was deep underwater or inside a drum.

“Taziri!”

Suddenly half of her senses snapped into focus and her mind clicked into gear.

Orossa. Barracks. Ghanima
.

She scrambled to her feet, still dizzy and woolly-brained, but she could see the two figures struggling on the floor between two beds just a few yards away.

Ghanima. And a very large man.

Taziri lurched forward and promptly crashed sideways into the wall as her feet and inner ear completely failed to establish how to walk and balance. Her chest was still screaming for air from her bruised throat as her fingers clawed at the floor and she hurled herself upright again. Taziri paused to stare dumbly at her boot lying on the floor. Then she blinked and her body came to life. She snatched up the boot, wielding the steel toe-cover like a hammer, and smashed it across the back of the man’s head.

The man leapt up and turned to reveal the blackened features of Medur Hamuy. Bits of flesh hung from his face in tatters and open wounds oozed all manners of wetness and slime. His whole frame was bent and leaning, shuddering and trembling as he stuttered: “You s-s-sorry little shit, that’s th-th-three times in the head! I’m gonna kill you!” He buried his heavy fist in the engineer’s stomach.

Taziri felt her body being hollowed out as the air left her lungs and she lost the feeling in her hands. She fell back against the wall, again gasping for air, but her lungs only fluttered back in code that they wouldn’t be working for quite a few seconds. She leaned against the wall, trembling slightly between asphyxiation and vomiting, watching Hamuy charge toward her.